It's also interesting to note that there's a distinct delineation in "before Bambu" and "post-Bambu" in communities with a DIY part to them - there's been a humongous explosion in creativity and functional, valuable output ever since the cost of entry went from "you gotta own a metal shop or a wood shop" to "buy this one $1000 machine and a hardware kit".
For example, I remember frequenting the NerfHaven forums back in the day, and people were designing Nerf blasters in Solidworks, printing drawings out, gluing them to polycarbonate, and using scroll saws to build their own blasters capable of 150fps. Nowadays, I can buy a printer, a hardware kit, and build my own 200fps capable blaster in an afternoon, and there's probably 5-10 new interesting, fleshed out concepts a month.
The explosion in depth, detail, and accessibility in DIY cosplay designs is also incredible.
When the hobby devolves to "load this file and click 'print'" then the people whose reward was found in the actual creation of the thing get disillusioned. Not sure why, because they can still do things the hard way, but I guess it seems pointless.
Famously, there have been significant issues in the past (see Tammany Hall) but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as widespread as it used to be, and especially not at the national election level. I’m sure that there’s shady stuff happening in local (county) level elections, but that’s of significantly less importance to the rest of the general public
An added point about Tammany Hall is that for much of time it was a relevant political power, the US did not have secret ballots. Arguably, it was the lack of anonymity/secrecy in voting that allowed for the types of election fraud that Tammany Hall and others were known for.
The secret ballot perhaps made a particular type of election fraud, the kind done by dedicated partisans voting multiple times themselves, theoretically easier. But it removed the mechanics that allowed far more prevalent and lucrative election fraud. In the Tammany Hall era, you could buy votes and know that your paid voters actually voted the way you wanted. You could promise that your preferred candidates, if elected, would give rewards only to people who voted for them, and actually follow through with that promise. You could physically prevent people from voting with ballots that weren't yours, rather than trying to rely on demographics.
the CNC machine I'm working retrofitting right now has XML definitions for basically the entire thing from GPIO setup to machine size parameters. Kinda crazy but at least it isn't a cursed hex file
In the west greater education doesn't lead to people wanting to live in a factory compound in communal dorms with suicide nets where they can be woken up at midnight to start a shift on a whim. Doesn't lead to people wanting to eat all their meals in a cafeteria with the other people on their shift. The factories I visited even their children went to school in a school within the compound.
Yes, my spouse and I were very conscious of this. My kids are now at an age where some of the just-in-case tracking chafes and they ditch trackers and turn off location on their watch. Its a normal renegotiation that occurs as they pass through various maturity thresholds. The older of them has thusfar rejected phones and watches and uses Omarchy on an old Thinkpad.
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